SAM PECKINPAH

The maverick’s maverick

By David Day

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American cinema in the '70s was beyond a golden age, it was bona fide platinum. Babazillionaires like Spielberg and Lucas were just getting their feet wet, Coppola was winning Oscars and auteurs like Altman and Malick were rankling the Hollywood establishment with each feature. But David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah, who got the jump on all of them, was just straight-up pissing people off.

Having already upset the order in the mid '60s, he roared back with The Wild Bunch, which re-imagined the Western as a bloody mess. He was again banished from Hollywood only to re-emerge in 1971 to direct Straw Dogs—a harrowing account of a man (Dustin Hoffman) driven mad in the English countryside. It features such startling violence, sexual and otherwise, it was banned from video for years.

Peckinpah's most commercial film, The Getaway (1972), is sometimes cited as his greatest. Starring man-of-men Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy and a red-hot Ali MacGraw as his co-conspirator and wife, it's a roaring, rural, Texas shoot-'em-up beyond compare. Peckinpah's stylistic touches are everywhere, from editing antics to manic kidnapping creeps, but no more so than in the riveting opening sequence. Illustrating McCoy's jailhouse insanity, the sound of prison textile machines roar throughout the credits, surely making audiences squirm. Freeze-frames snap to a climax, when McCoy insanely shreds a crudely crafted sculpture. The famous novel by Jim Thompson allows the lead duo to have sex whenever possible (MacGraw actually ended up leaving her husband for McQueen), get trapped inside a trash truck and drive like total maniacs. As the movie progresses, the gore gets more intense and graphic—MacGraw herself even starts blowing people away.

The Getaway may have flipped the ultimate middle-finger to prudes: The murdering couple walks away, happily ever after.

Peckinpah died in 1984, a result of his rampant drinking and drug use, but the legacy he left behind matches the filmography of even his most giant-like peers.

SAM PECKINPAH, BLOOD POET

FRIDAY 9.5.08-FRIDAY 9.12.08

THE GETAWAY

MONDAY 9.8.08

9PM/$8 REGULAR ADMISSION/$6 NON-HARVARD STUDENTS

HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE

24 QUINCY ST.,

HARVARD SQ.,

CAMBRIDGE

617.495.4700

HCL.HARVARD.EDU/HFA